fea I >. • - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

esidential area of 114 family units, says
more. The pueblo-style houses are set in
green yards with flowers and shrubs,
and each has a carport shading a car or
pickup. Glancing at them, I could assume
that tribal mores are a thing of the
past, but I would be wrong.
On June 13, the Tiguas still honor
their patron saint, San Antonio, with ancient
ceremonial dances in front of their
church. They have retained their tribal
political and religious formats, revere
the land and its animals and still bake
their bread in outdoor adobe ovens.
They respect local herbs for their
curative powers and desert plant life as
nourishing food.
In a small, windowless building called
the tuhla, the tribal elders (the cacique,
war chief, captains and mayordomos)
still preserve their sacred objects—buffalo
masks, ceremonial canes and the
tribal drum. Tradition insists that the
drum came south with the original people.
It is around this drum that most of
the tribe's vitality still seems to revolve.
Before important decisions are made,
the elders "talk to the drum." Beating a
slow, steady rhythm, whispering into a
hole in its side, listening with ears attuned
to insights far beyond words, the
elders learn the long, mythic truths that
function beyond everyday facts and
figures.
Talking with Tiguas, I am assured
they firmly intend for their culture to
live. To do that, the people have always
48 November, 1981
Right: Master potter Alex Ramirez uses
local red clay.
Below: The use of traditional motifs in
their pottery has helped revitalize Tigua tribal pride.
had to reaffirm that conviction. In spite
of the fact that King Charles V of Spain
granted the Tiguas clear title to 36
square miles of land and river in 1751,
their hold became tenuous as non-
Indian, Mexican farmers plowed closer
and closer, becoming increasingly
greedy for easy access to the river and irrigation.
In my judgment, the most
significant explanation for
the Tiguas' new lease on
life is their still-abiding
conviction that they will
preserve and pass on to
their children the heritage
their forebears passed on to
them.
When Texas became an American
state in 1845, the Tiguas's problem
became more complicated. Texas entered
the Union on a footing equal
"with the original states in all respects
whatsoever." Texas adopted the 13
original states' hands-off unconcern for
their Indians, and ignored all her
aboriginal peoples.
In 1852, the state did recognize the
Spanish crown's Ysleta Land Grant as
valid title to the now-American portion
of the Tiguas' original acreage. But even
this proved largely meaningless as
American towns grew up around it,
leaving the Indians to till their shrinking
fields, to hunt surreptitiously for rabbits
and other small game on desert land that
had always been theirs—despite what
other folks said.
In 1872, Ysleta del Sur, by then an
ethnic mixture of Anglo, Mexican and
Indian peoples, became an incorporated
town—without the Tiguas' being consulted—and,
as such, free to dispose of
its public lands as it saw fit. When the
town was officially dissolved three years
later, it had sold off or politically given
away almost all of the Tiguas' crown
grant. The Indians were left with nothing
but cloudy titles to their adobe
hovels—one-half square mile of Indian
land—and bitter resentment. Another
blow fell in 1955 when El Paso, Texas
annexed the Ysleta area, and the Indians
suddenly became subject to property
taxes amounting to over $100 per family
per year, at a time when the average
Tigua family annual income was under
$400.
Since then, the picture has vastly improved.
The Tiguas give credit to an
Anglo, El Paso attorney, named Tom
Diamond. It was Diamond's personal
feel for the tribe and his skill in the
courtroom that brought the Tiguas to
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